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This guide explains how to use the Budget Overview Inquiry in NUFinancials to find information about your expense, revenue, or grant budget.
How do you search for expense and revenue information in NUFinancials (both budget and actuals)? The Budget Overview search is helpful for looking up the budget, pre-encumbrances, encumbrances, expense, revenue estimate, or recognized revenue for a specific chart string. You can search on a range of values such as multiple funds, projects, and departments. You can also export the data to Excel.
- Budget Overview data does not include Facilities and Administration (F&A) on encumbrances for grant chart strings.
- Users with Budget Inquiry security access and row level security can use Budget Overview.
What purposes does this search serve?
- Name and save frequently used searches for convenience
- View the entire approved budget for a school, unit, department, or project
- Search with a single chart string or with a range of chart strings or ChartField values
- View budget performance (budget minus actuals)
- Export budget and actuals summary data to Excel
- View activity totals associated with the budget, expense, encumbrance, and pre-encumbrance ledgers
Navigate to the NUFinancials Budget Overview
- Login to NUFinancials: nufin.northwestern.edu.
- From the Main Menu, click on the Navigator compass > Navigator > Commitment Control > Review Budget Activities > Budget Details
Step 1: Name your search
For example: this search is named RTV_STUDY because it will be used to find all non-grant expense chart strings associated with the Radio TV & Film Studies department.
- Inquiry names cannot contain spaces. Use _ instead of a space.
- The inquiry name is a name for your specific search. After a search is named, the name cannot be changed. However, you may update the search criteria at any time.
- To open a search previously created, click the Find an Existing Value tab, Search, and then click on the search name to open it.
- Inquiry names are associated with your NetID and cannot be viewed by other users.
Step 2: Select a ledger group
- Enter a description of your search. This shows up next to the inquiry name for future use.
- Click and select a Ledger Group.
Step 3: Select a calendar type (choose option A or B)
Select Detail Budget Period to view the budget for the whole fiscal year, or select Detail Accounting Period to limit the budget results to a specific accounting period or range of accounting periods.
Option A: Detail Accounting Period
Select this to customize the date range of the search.
- Select Detail Accounting Period from the menu.
- Leave this box checked. Enter a date range using fiscal year and accounting period (months). % pulls all years.
Option B: Detail Budget Period
Select this to pull all data for fiscal year indicated.
- Select Detail Budget Period from the menu.
- Leave these boxes checked. For grants, this area is blank; a fiscal year is not needed. For non-grants searches, don t change the budget period unless you want to pull data for a different fiscal year.
Step 4: Enter your chart string values
- Enter the range of ChartField values that you want to pull data for. (% pulls all values).
- Click Save. This saves your search criteria for next time.
- Click Search.
Step 5: View the results
If a More rows are available warning box appears, click OK, and then type a larger number in the Max Rows box. Click Search to pull up-to-date results. You must pull in all available rows to get accurate totals in the Ledger Totals area. These are the combined totals for the results shown below.
Step 6: Drill to source transactions
Step 7: View the results
Note New window opens up as a popup. The popup blocker on your browser must be turned off!
Step 8: Export the data to Excel
Most browsers present dialogs guiding you through the download. Firefox, for example, opens a new tab or window and presents the sequence below.
A dialog asks, What should Firefox do with this file?
- Click Open to see the download in Excel.
- Click Save to save the file to a local or network directory.
Notice that the file name is ps.xls.
- Click Save as to rename the file while saving it to a local or network directory.
Result: the Excel file opens in a new application window. You can manipulate the spreadsheet as you would any Excel file.
Summary
- Step 1: Name your search
- Step 2: Select a ledger group
- Step 3: Select a calendar type
- Step 4: Enter your chart string values
- Step 5: View the results
- Step 6: Drill to source transactions
- Step 7: View the results
- Step 8: Export the data to Excel
For additional assistance please contact the IT Support Center at 847-491-4357 (1-HELP) or email servicedesk@northwestern.edu.